The Whitehorse man who lost his home to arson in February has been convicted of uttering threats and brandishing a weapon in an incident which appears to be related to his quest for revenge.

Steven Marada's apartment in one of the city's historic Log Skyscrapers was set alight on the night of Feb. 18, just hours after Marada was arrested on a warrant and charged with drug trafficking.

At first, Marada blamed the Whiteorse RCMP for the fire, saying investigators negligently piled clothes on his baseboard heater during their search of his home.

But he changed his tune after speaking to a fire investigator from Edmonton, sent up specifically to look into the fire.

"Before, I assumed it was the police ... but I'm getting a different story from the fire chief,” Marada told the Star on the Monday following the fire.

He said whoever lit the blaze also stole the contents of two safes in the apartment. The fire destroyed all of Marada's belongings, he said, including a collection of antiques – inventory for a soon-to-be-opened antiques store.

He offered a $10,000 reward for information leading to the person responsible. But according to witnesses who testified in court last week, Marada didn't end his quest for revenge there.

In the weeks following the blaze, after Marada was released on bail, he got into an altercation with another downtown resident which landed him back in jail.

On March 17, a rock came crashing through Patricia Ledgerwood's front window. A week before, the same thing had happened to her daughter's window; the family suspected it was Marada's doing.

It seems Marada believed a friend of the family was responsible for the fire at the Log Skyscraper. But Patricia's daughter Amada wasn't about to take things lying down.

The day after her mother's window was broken, Amanda heard Marada's signature vintage green Corvette rumbling down the street outside Patricia's Lambert Street house.

"She was pissed,” her brother Christopher Ledgerwood told Judge Michael Cozens last Friday. "She wanted to confront him about the window because she thought he'd paid some kids to do it.”

Amanda walked out to the street and started yelling at Marada, who was on the front step of a neighbour's house.

"As soon as he seen me, he started yelling at me if I wanted to f--k with his family,” Amanda told the court.

"... He said that I was f--king dead and that I think he might have said he didn't have anything to do with my mom's window.”

As the two stood on the street yelling at each other, Christopher came out to see what was going on and saw Marada go back to his car and return with a hammer.

Brother and sister both testified that Marada was brandishing the hammer at Amanda, although he didn't swing it at her, nor did he get close enough to hit her if he had tried.

"It was like arguing with a drunk, basically,” Christopher said of the words exchanged. "He wasn't making a lot of sense.”

Christopher said he had a cast on his arm at the time and denied having a baseball bat in his hand when he came out of the house.

He also said he didn't see his sister throw rocks or spit at Marada, as the lone defence witness said she did.

For her part, Amanda told the court she was calling Marada "a goof and a rapist and a skinner.”

She also denied throwing rocks or spitting.

After exchanging abuses for a few minutes, Marada got back in his car and drove away, the Ledgerwoods said. Amanda said she went for a walk to cool off, then decided to stop at the RCMP detachment and make a complaint.

"It seems we're there a lot lately, and his name usually comes up,” she said.

According to a statement he gave to police later that night, Marada said he had a toy hammer in his hand, but Amanda scoffed at the suggestion.

"I have three boys; I know what a toy hammer looks like. It wasn't a toy.”

Marada pleaded not guilty to the charge of uttering threats and brandishing a weapon, but did not take the stand in his own defence.

The judge found Marada guilty after the half-day trial, but he has not yet been sentenced.